Rounds On BBC4 Quiz Show Only Connect

Before you protest that there is no such TV station as BBC4 and do I mean Radio 4, no there really is such a TV channel.

And if you have encountered it, then it is not impossible you've come across the quirky quiz show Only Connect, presented by Victoria Coren (daughter of Alan Coren and sister of Giles Coren who you may have heard of), with her strangely deep voice and slightly whacky / offbeat sense of humour and observations running through each show.

This is a list of the rounds that appear in this quiz show which has now had several series, indicating that this BBC4 you've just come across has actually been running for several years.
By: listmaster

List of Rounds On BBC4 Quiz Show Only Connect

(1) Connections

This is the first round, and up to four clues are given with decreasing points the longer it takes to find the link between the four words.
Each team has three connections as there are six different connections in the round and there are two teams of three in the quiz show. These are revealed behind Egyptian hieroglyphs in series 4 of the show.

(2) Sequences

This time only up to three items are given, as there is not just a connection between the items but rather they are part of a sequence, therefore the aim of the game is to determine what comes fourth.
Again, the earlier a team works out the correct answer, the more points they receive. For instance the sequence could be sizes of park in London in decreasing size or anything that has a definite order (that is, an ordered sequence (can a sequence be unordered?) not a mere list of items sharing some connection).

(3) Connecting Wall

This is perhaps the most popular round of the show, and a wall is presented which is a 4x4 array of words or phrases.
So there are 16 words or phrases, and the aim is to split these into four sets of 4 connected words. Some walls are notably easier than others.
Of course as you whittle down the connections then things get easier, and a complicating factor is often that there may be 5 or 6 possible answers for a category so you need to iterate through the possibilities to find the correct 4. A prudent team who has much time left at the end but is not sure of the fourth connection will spend time trying to work out what it is before submitting their answer.
When it comes to the final two sets, you only have three chances to stop teams just blindly guessing. At the end you get a point for revealing the connection between each of the sets of 4 in addition to a point for each group of 4 you find, with 2 bonus points if you get a perfect solution.
Occasionally there have been reports of multiple potential solutions to walls depending to some extent on how tenuous you allow a link to be between members of a group which of course comes down to fairly subjective opinion.

(4) Missing Vowels

Here the vowels from a word or phrase are removed, and the aim is simply to be the first to buzz in and guess what the word or phrase is.
They are categorised in groups of 4. Basically for anyone who is fairly decent at this sort of puzzle, it boils down to whether you actually have heard of the word or phrase or not: if you have, then more often or not you will get the connection pretty much instantly, if you haven't then you will never get it within the time allowed to find an answer!